Talk of the fair

Image by jnxyz

These past days have been very agitated with one thing. It seems this one thought was on everyone's mind. A lot of well established bloggers talked about it. People like John Chow (from JohhChow.com), Darren Rose (from ProBlogger.com), Daniel Scocco (from DailyBlogTips.com), and many others, were talking about it. If you haven't guessed it by now, let me tell you. It's about the BlogMastermind.com training program.

Still doesn't ring a bell? Then this means you're not subscribed, either by RSS feed or by email, to any blog that has as point of interest the online money making niche. Ahhhh! you might say. Yes, it's yet again about making money online. Although I already openly stated that this blog will be a personal one, there are still some attempts of producing an online income. Failed attempts I might add. But that's another story.

I started to talk about the BlogMastermind Blog Profits Blueprints, as they are called by the author and the man behind the whole thing, Yaro Starak. The purpose of these is to teach you, a novice in the Internet business niche, how to produce an income through your website. A web-blog in this case. From what I could tell, these are only pointers meant to get you started in forming a strategy of your own. As Daniel Stocco says on the main page of blogmastermind.com: "I wish there was something like this around when I first started out making money from blogs".

But since this is not a post that is ment to promote a specific product or service, I will stop right there with the presentation. What I was planing to say was this: this program has been the "talk of the fair" these last few days. My RSS reader couldn't handle anymore Yaro Starak or BlogMastermind posts. It all started a few days earlier with the presentation videos (see first video). I admit, I was first very interested in what they had to offer. And I still am. But these days I'm waiting to leave on vacation, so I'm saving up the money I have.

Trying to keep up with what has happened in the world lately, I bumped into this program at every step. It might be the search patterns I use, the feeds I'm subscribed to or who knows, but I continually ended up at a page talking about it.

Today however, I curiously checked my RSS reader to see if there are any more feeds regarding this subject and I happily noticed there weren't. This might mean that it's finally over. At least for now. Soon I'll be expecting the wonderful results people have been obtaining through the blogmastermind.com training course. And then things start all over again.

And with that I end my pointless and random rambling. Hope I've got at least a few people bored or frustrated for loosing a few moments of their lives. After all, everyone needs a purpose. And this post's purpose is just that.

Entrecard: let's see what's all the fuss about

I probably would have never heard about this if so many blogs wouldn't have posted about it. I've probably seen it before in the sidebars, but haven't paid too much attention to it. It was just one of the many other plug-ins that help you build a network and "bring in thousands of visitors". So I decided to give it try.

I could tell right away that there's a lot of activity there. One minute after I've signed up and placed the code for the widget on the blog, I already had a few cards dropped in. It's like it's an ants nest over there, everyone just waiting for the next victim :). I also approved a few advertisers that appeared soon after. Not more than 30 seconds later I think. But I never had the chance to learn what it's all about. So I read the informations that were on the website, but I got bored pretty fast. And then I went back over the posts of the bloggers that made me join. I've seen a lot of contests out there that give away EC (Entrecard currency) if you perform certain tasks like linking to their website/blog, write a short post about it, subscribe via email, write comments or other stuff like that. And the prizes are somewhere between 500 and 1000 EC. To buy ad space on one of the higher blogs enrolled in Entrecard costs you around 200-300 and some might reach 400EC or more. The ad (which is actually a picture of your choice) is placed on the website where you where approved for 24 hours. If it's a web site with many visitors per day, then you can get quite a lot of hits if your add sparks interest. Apparently the easiest way to get EC is to drop your card on other peoples widget. You get one EC and they get one in turn. That would explain why people hold that sort of contests. If you have a lot of people that drop their card on your blog daily then that sums up to a lot of EC. Instead of a one day box on another website, why not encourage people to link to you? Those links are of a more permanent nature and they're backed up by a free review. That looks like a good deal to me.

The problem with people earning EC just by dropping their card on your site is you don't get a real visitor out of this. They just come in, drop it, and leave fast so they can drop it somewhere else. In my opinion that translates most always to a 100% bounce rate, thus making this system useless. I'm not saying that it doesn't get the job done, it just doesn't do it the it planned for it. You can still create a network through Entrecard because you find very easily people/blogs from your niche and that way you can discover new things, find out about new programs or who knows what other stuff you would normally find the traditional way. So it's still good for something. As I said, I haven't had the chance to study it more so I don't know everything it's capable of. But so far, thing look pretty nice. If not for anything else, you can use it to waste a few minutes of your day browsing in a different manner.

As I was writing this a thought came to my head on how to prevent the 100% bounce rate. People just come in, drop the card and leave. That's not nice of them. How could we keep them for longer? Well for them to leave as fast as possible, they need to drop their card, so they need to find the widget. What if you placed a display:hidden attribute on it? I mean enclose it in a hidden div or something like that. Would the widget disappear? Just imagine the people in a hurry to drop you their card and wander mindlessly on your site to find the widget :). Of course this way you would lose the EC that you would normally win, but I guess it's worth it for a good laugh. It was just a thought anyway.

Cheating an auto-surf

This is the follow-up of what I was saying in the last post. Since I first saw an auto-surf or paid-to program, I've always tried to cheat them. Shame on me. I actually managed to trick quite a few, but with no real financial income. This is just one of the: LinkCrews.com. It's a nice auto-surf, cute graphical interface and interesting crediting mechanism. You can find more information on their website. So let's get on with it.

First of all, I have a XAMPP package installed on my computer, but you can use any Apache installation and PHP. This one is just easy to use and provides me with everything I need. The cheating script is comprised of 2 files in my case. One is the html file "hack.html" and the other is "hold.php". I don't know why I've named them this way. You can use whatever names you like. Both of them need to be placed in the same folder in your "htdocs" folder and will be accessed like this in your browser "http://localhost/foldername/hack.html". The source was not originally commented, so I did that in a hurry. What you really have to do is replace "your_user_name_here" with, you guessed it, your LinkCrews user name. And it should work. If it doesn't, don't expect any support. Cheating is wrong (damn conscience!). I might tell their support team about this simple method of cheating their system. And one last thought: this works because they don't really have a good anti-cheat system. I don't even know if they have any. So let's get on with it already. The first file is "hack.html" and the source code is:

<html>
<head>
<!-- refresh page every 15 seconds -->
<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="15;URL=http://localhost/hack.html">
<script type="text/javascript">
/*- function that creates a new "special" variable
- if you want more info, do a Google search for AJAX
- I won't comment this one*/
function newXMLHTTP(){
  try{
    request = new XMLHttpRequest();
    // Firefox, Opera 8.0+, Safari
    return request;
    }
  catch (e){
   // Internet Explorer
   try{
     request = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
     return request;
     }
   catch (e){
     try{
       request = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
       return request;
       }
     catch (e){
       alert("Your browser does not support AJAX!");
       return false;
       }
     }
   }
 }

// the main function of the script
function fetch_new_link(){
   var XMLHttpRequestObject = newXMLHTTP(); 
   //create that special variable
   if(XMLHttpRequestObject){
      XMLHttpRequestObject.async = false;
      XMLHttpRequestObject.open("GET", "hold.php");
      XMLHttpRequestObject.send(null);
      XMLHttpRequestObject.onreadystatechange = function() {
        // if our variable is ok
        // let's get the job done
        if (XMLHttpRequestObject.readyState == 4){
           var linktxt = XMLHttpRequestObject.responseText; 
           // what our php file gave us
           newlink = "http://linkcrews.com/surf/index.php?username=usr_name&id=" + linktxt + ""; 
           //create the new link; replace your username here
           frames['container'].location.href = newlink; 
           // point the frame to the next link
           }
         }
       }
     }
    // end all the circus
 </script>
</head>
<body onLoad="javascript:fetch_new_link()">
<!-- start the script on the spot -->
<!-- this will hold the new links -->
<iframe name="container" id="container" width="100%"></iframe>
<!-- and that's about it -->
</body></html>

And the second file, "hold.php", is:

<?
// print out errors if any
function print_error(){
global $parser;
die(sprintf("XML Error: %s at line %d",
xml_error_string($xml_get_error_code($parser)),
xml_get_current_line_number($parser)));
}

// use the default xml parsing methods
$parser = xml_parser_create();
xml_parser_set_option($parser,XML_OPTION_SKIP_WHITE,1);
xml_parser_set_option($parser,XML_OPTION_CASE_FOLDING,0);

// I can't really remember what this does
$data = implode("", file("http://linkcrews.com/surf/links2.php?username=usr")); 
// remember put your username here

xml_parse_into_struct($parser,$data,&$d_ar,&$i_ar) or print_error();

// get the availabe links
$values = array();
foreach($d_ar as $key){
if($key['tag'] == 'id'){
$values[] = $key['value'];
}
}

xml_parser_free($parser); // destroy the xml parser

$i = rand(0,2); // pick one of the links
echo $values[$i]; // send it to the html file "special" variable
?>

And that's about it. There might be certain errors in the code due to the transcription of the html special characters. If you can't make it work, oh well, maybe it's better this way. I've stopped using it anyway. It's just not worth it for me.

Boy, I'm tired. And now I'm all out of ideas and beer. So I'll come back when everything stops spinning. See ya.

LE: I just noticed that certain longer lines of the code are not visible because the posting area has overflow:hidden. Sorry about that. But if you select from top to bottom and paste them in a text editor it should be OK

On to Bidvertiser

Today I was surfing the Internet without a particular purpose (yet again). I need to find some sort of a purpose in life, something that would keep me entertained for the rest of my days. Maybe next year.

This year however I'm still looking for methods of increasing my financial income. On that note, I end up talking about Bidvertiser.com. What are they? What do they do? Well, as many other companies out there, they sell ads, of course. Content targeted ads. Sounds familiar? Sure it does. They do pretty much the same thing Google with it's AdSense does. So I signed up and I've added yet another ad box in the layout. It's the one close to the top, that says Bidvertiser in it's title. Duh!

One might ask why I signed up for them when I already had AdSense. And it's a good question. A bad answer would be: because I want to hurt everyone's eyes with all sorts of ads. But I won't be giving that answer. No. I will promote this program in a decent way. And here are the reasons:

• it has a lower payment level, much easier to achieve than Google AdSense. There are not many people that can reach the $100 limit, especially if they're just beginning a new website or blog. How does $10 sound like?
• payment can be done via PayPal, as well as check, feature that is not implement in AdSense (the PayPal option I mean). This is particularly useful if you want to see your money fast
• activation of your account is automated and instant so you don't have to wait for someone to review your website, which usually takes a few days
• the ads on your website are always the highest paying ones, because it's a bid, get it? Like in auction. And these only get higher and higher in time, as more and more advertisers place their ads through them.

Other features are almost similar to every other ad selling program: you can customize the way the ads will look like, you can block different ads from being displayed, have detailed reports and one great feature is the referral program:

• when a user signs as an advertiser and first spends $10, they credit your account with $5. When that same advertiser spends $50, you will be credited with an additional $20
• when a user signs as a publisher and first earns $10, they credit your account with $10. When that same publisher earns $50, you will be credited with an additional $40.

That sounds awesome to me. So I've joined and I encourage you to do the same. It's a good alternative to AdWords (for advertisers) and AdSense (for publishers), easy to install and fully customizable. Just give it a try. You can use the following link to do that: Bidvertiser.com

Imagine that - Agloco finally sinks

Yes people, Agloco has finally reached the end of it's life. It seems that all those that considered it a bad deal from the beginning were right. Everything was looking so great: getting huge income just for installing and running a viewbar. It's times like this that make me feel happy I didn't spend too much of my energy on a certain program.

For those of you that still don't know about the great Agloco (where have you been in the last 1.5 years?) here's what it "was" about. You would install and run a small application that would display ads as you surf the Internet. In turn you accumulate hours with a maximum cap of 5 hours per month. To increase these you have to refer others to the program, of course. This way you would win a percentage of their hours. At a certain point, which was never made public, those hours were to be turned into currency. Having a large network would guarantee you a large income for very little effort. The money should have come from the ads that were displayed in the viewbar and from the affiliate revenue on the product one would buy through the viewbar. And everybody's happy. What a perfect world!

Things didn't go the way they planned and after a while the whole thing hit the bottom. And I don't think anyone got even a cent off Agloco. Now that's a big scam, seeing that the network, and the mailing list now has over 1 million members. Imagine the offers the owners of the program are receiving right about now. And boy, the users will sure and up with a lot of "fresh" SPAM (me including). Luckily I provided them with a disposable email :)

I guess all good things must come to an end eventually. I'm just sad that Agloco was not one of the good things. With this (and other thoughts) in mind, I'm wondering how much time it will take for people to remove all their affiliate links from all over the net. And after I've seen all sorts of encouragements to join Agloco, I'm thinking now I'll be seeing a lot of angry people cursing and swearing. Oh well, that's life!

Heard about Gomez?

Hello again. A few days ago I got really bored in front of the computer (imagine that) so I started to jump from web site to web site. Just to see if there is anything interesting that I can find. I haven't had much success, but one good thing came out of all of this.

Have you ever heard about Gomez PEER? If you did, you probably got it installed a long time ago. Probably even reaped some financial benefits from it. Well, I remember I tried to install it a while ago but I can't remember why I didn't keep it up. So I went ahead and downloaded the client and now it's up and running, both at work and at home. I'm counting the minutes :)

For those of you that haven't heard about it, here's a short intro: they pay you for staying online and doing nothing. Sound familiar? Of course it does. It sounds just like those spyware bars that display all sorts of ads on your desktop and install anything you can imagine. Well, it's not exactly like that. First off, this application does not take space on your desktop. It just sits in your tray. Secondly, it does not display anything on your monitor. If you like, it can display something, and even then it shows your statistics, online time, earned income and stuff like that. "So why am I getting paid then?" you might ask. And it's a good question. You see, as you surf the Internet, the application scans for different bottle necks in the network, performance of websites on different connection types and many other parameters. Because this can't be done by a single person or even a single company, they called for the support of the Internet users and in return they offer, well, money. What you have to do is sign up by filling the online form, install the peer and let it run every time you turn on your computer. Don't worry about resources, you won't even feel it. As soon as you are accepted as an Active member, you start earning income.

What happens is the data that is collected and processed on your computer is sent to them every 15 minutes and in turn you get paid. And that's about it. More info can be found on their web site. If you would like to give it a try, just go to this address and sign-up.

And that's all I wanted to tell you for now. Not much, but it's something anyway. I had a few days now without any brain activity. I'll try to find something awesome to post soon.

Methods of making money on line

That must be one of the most discussed subject on the Internet . The idea that you can make money on the web, without a lot of work, makes people spend a lot of money in the process. Now isn't that funny? Trying to earn more money, you spend money, hopping you will receive some income in the end. The truth is that money have always made people behave in strange manners and scamming others has become just a small step in the "circulation of currency".

The Internet has given people a lot of ideas and many of them are not very legit. Wherever there is an exchange of currency, there's sure to be at least one person trying to ripoff someone. As long as there are stupid people, there will be others to take advantage of them. For example, I heard a while ago that some guy notified the police that he had been ripped off on eBay. He paid for the good in advance, but it was never delivered. The funny thing in this story is what he tried to buy: a helicopter! That's right, the full size one, not the toy. I mean, COME ON! Who the hell tries to buy a helicopter on eBay? What was that man thinking? It was going to mail it to him?

I'm not saying that earning money on the Internet is impossible. In fact I'm sure it's very much possible and I'm sure it even involves large sums of money. I just haven't seen any of it yet. But I'm not giving up. I just have to find that little thing that makes the Internet piggy-bank bleed. Then I'll be filthy rich, I'll have a Lamborghini, a huge mansion with a swimming pool and 50 girls in bikini bathing in the sun. Yeah, right!

Until then, I'll just have to try it the old fashion way: do whatever other people are doing, and hopefully have more luck at it then the majority. And on that note I hereby announce my first "Join this" link. I don't plan to fill your head with all sort of money making campaigns, but I think I'll just slip one now and then, here and there. And remember, you always have the AdSense boxes. If you see something that interests you, don't hesitate to click on it. OK, let's just get over with it:

• uvme.biz - this looks pretty interesting. It's still in beta, or pre-launch as they call it, but it seems very promising. The website is still not completed, but you can find a lot of information about the way things will develop the second they launch. It's worth signing up, just out of curiosity if nothing else. Plus that thing with the "get it while it's hot" has always given me an impulse
• Big Fish Games - this is one of the fun ones. One of the best "try before you buy" companies. They offer some of the greatest games ever. I'm sure many of you have heard of them and great titles like Virtual Villagers: A New Home (with the sequel Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children) or Diner Dash (and the sequels Diner Dash 2 Restaurant Rescue, Diner Dash Flo on the Go, Diner Dash: Hometown Hero). One of the best thing about them is they offer you 2 free games when you sign-up. A definite must have.

Well, that's all for now. I'll come back soon with new content as soon as I figure out what that will be. Bye!